The life cycle of any Intelligent Electronic Device (IED), also referred to as an asset, includes all the activities that start with design and engineering phases of the process plant application needing the device, going on to selecting a manufacturer and device to suit the application, the procurement and placement of the device into service, operating the device while it is deployed and culminating in retirement of the device from service. In the operational phase, the device is also managed and maintained to provide sustained and reliable service.
IEDs provide services to Process Industries, Discrete Component Manufacturing Industries, Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution Utilities etc. Amongst the various stages in the life cycle of an IED, there exists a variety of device management and maintenance operations performed by process plant personnel and device vendors. The device vendors perform support of disparate devices using a diverse array of tools and systems, rendering great complexity to the overall operations within the plant.
The complexity of today's systems stems from a variety of field bus standards, a number of diagnostic and maintenance tools for device management, backward compatibility requirements for several software versions necessitated in order to protect one's investment over time, several software versions of host application standards and the introduction of the Internet. For example, disparate industry standards for field bus networks in typical manufacturing plants could be any of ProfiBus, Device Net, Foundation Field Bus (for the Process Industries), Inter Bus S, Control Net and CAN Open (for the Discrete Manufacturing Industries). HART protocols need inclusion in this list even though they are not field bus protocols, as they present the same requirements towards a holistic LCMS. The disparate protocols mentioned have individual engineering tools to configure, install, commission and maintain devices that are connected using those protocols.
Field bus networks have evolved over the last ten years and many of them remain viable for many more years to come. Customers are keen to protect the investment they have made on these devices and networks, consequently being required to maintain diverse engineering tools and skills to keep the overall system running. Simply reducing the number of allied standards does not readily translate to reduced complexity. In other words, a LCMS needs to consider and make provisions for obsolete standards in a consistent manner.
At the present time, the players involved in the different stages in the life cycle of the devices in a process plant and the overall system in that plant are the design engineers, the device vendors offering support to the devices deployed, the control operator controlling the overall operation of the plant etc. The device vendors presently provide Electronic Device Description (EDD) source files written using the Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) to standardize a simple operator control interface. This technology does not address the problems that the customer faces in coping with a diversity of vendor specific engineering tools to set up, configure, install, commission and perform the life cycle management of devices. The newer technology of Field Device Tool (FDT) and Device Type Manager (DTM), intended as an extension of the EDDL technology, has addressed this issue. This technology made it possible to have a common interface at the host systems to engineer and operate the field device networks with the field devices supplied by different vendors. This technology consequently increased the need for a LCMS owing to the large number software components, each having related and independent updates and upgrades, with respect to the host platform. Device vendors are often reluctant to shoulder the responsibility of providing DTMs for the devices which they supply, owing to the disparity in host platforms, changing software version releases for the underlying Operating Systems etc. Ethernet is now popular in process plant environments, and is rapidly evolving to accommodate an application subset that extends beyond hard real-time applications. This has further complicated the scenario. The emerging standards of ProfiNet, Ethernet IP and Ethernet for Control and Automation Technology (ECAT) are also responsible for introducing even more field devices. FDT/DTM tools are commonly unavailable for these devices utilizing the above-mentioned standards of ProfiNet, Ethernet IP and ECAT. Further, when there is a need to deploy EDDL and FDT/DTM technology concurrently, the complexity of the system increases further.
With the Internet enabling greater access with respect to Engineering and Asset Management systems, which provide thin client applications, the need for synchronization and inter-operability with the core system is amplified. Furthermore, device vendors provide several remote services and a multitude of web library servers (for different bus protocols such as PNO, ProfiBus, HART etc.), also enabled by the Internet. The design paradigm is rapidly evolving towards increasing the role of the Internet in basic connectivity of devices and other operations on devices.
Several Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) packages (also known as Common Asset Management or Engineering Systems) are available for plant operators to choose from including IFCS, Maximo and SAP. These systems focus on Enterprise Application Integration and have limitations when it comes to integrating diagnostic information from devices deployed in the field.
Plant operators have available to them a variety of desktop tools, hand-held devices and commercially available Personal Data Assistants (PDAs) to enable them to receive and analyze information pertaining to the devices in the plant. These tools and mobile devices encourage the engagement of web servers to relay the information enabling location-independence when it comes to managing the life cycle of the system.
Common Asset Management or Engineering Systems referred to above have diverse customer interfaces for gathering such information, but do not have common Human Man-Machine Interfaces (HMMIs) for life cycle management information. This is because life cycle management implies control over a larger subset of tasks (including engineering design and documentation) having to do with field devices, as opposed to the CMMS or Common Asset Management or Engineering Systems.
It is a major shortcoming of the existing systems to address the complexity introduced by the disparity in protocols, tools, implementation platforms, software versions and network configurations.
PCT Patent WO 01/02953 discloses a Method of integrating an application in a computerized system, presenting a system for computerized control of a real world object, making allowances for interlinking objects systematically. This patent introduces the concept of Composite Objects, containing Aspects representing facets of real world objects. This concept of Aspects is utilized in the present invention, however, the present invention extends beyond systematic representation and computerized control, to providing a LCMS in the case of process plants. Incorporating information from several stages in the life cycle of a device is not explored in the PCT Patent, it only provides a mechanism to enable such incorporation. The LCMS proposed by the present invention is located on the control network to manage IEDs in such domains as Process Automation and Manufacturing Automation. The means for maintaining information for a device or product through its various life cycle stages is enabled by the concept of Aspect Views of real world objects, from several different perspectives, each perspective being defined as a piece of information and set of functions to create, access, and manipulate the information provided. These Aspect Views are the building blocks of the Device Integration Aspect Objects.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,795,798 discloses a method for the Remote Analysis of process control plant data. This patent does not mention incorporating the documentation aspects within its design. Further, the central method of communication in the preferred embodiment uses XML.